Collectibles investments are in the news again

There was another great story this week about the power of collectible investments.

You may haveread about the sale of a classic Bugatti 57SC. If you missed it click here.

The owner paid $59,000 for the car in 1971. It sold again this week for $30,000,000.

That's a 17.32% investment return, each year, for the last 39 years.

Just to explain the beauty of compound returns: if that $30,000,000 shows the same rate of return over the next 39 years the owner will be sitting on $15.2 billion in 2049.

Some pension pot and quite an inheritance for the children.

Here's a good comparison: if basic essentials had gone up the same amount in the last 39 years we'd now be paying 596 for a chicken and 254 for a jar of coffee!

Collectibles investment returns like this have been commonplace throughout the recession.

You may remember in November 2009 we wrote that the lucky owner of Andy Warhol's 200 One Dollar Bills had just sold the masterpiece for $43.8m at auction in New York. They originally purchased the piece for $385,000 in 1986.

That's a return of almost 23% per annum over the last 23 years.

And you don't need to spend millions to experience these levels of return.

The owner of Marilyn Monroe's bathrobe did even better. He purchasedthe bathrobe for$6,000 in 1999 and sold it again at auction in 2009 for $120,000. That's almost 35% per annum over a decade.

Of course I'm highlighting top of the range returns here, however it's generally acknowledged that the historical average returns from collectibles investments area healthy10% per annum.

How can that work for you? Well, it's the type of return that turns a $10,000 investment into $108,000 over a 25 year period.